


Across From the Lighthouse

by nimery



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe, Author Did Far Too Much Worldbuilding, Brief OC appearances for Plot Purposes, Long-Haired Killua Zoldyck, M/M, Magic, POV Alternating, Psychological, Slow Burn, Surreal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21561127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimery/pseuds/nimery
Summary: Killua has manned the Westpeak Lighthouse alone for five years. After Kite--the former owner of the lighthouse--retires and returns to the village of Westpeak, far down the hill, Killua becomes resigned to living and working by himself. Though his expectation is subverted by the appearance of a mysterious, cursed stranger from the sea who will not explain how he got here, or how Killua can help rid him of his curse.
Relationships: Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck
Comments: 13
Kudos: 17





	1. Floating By, As Green As Emerald

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again, HxH fandom. It's been a while since I've dipped my toes in here. (Should be stated up front that I am not caught up in the manga and therefore will be basing much of this fic on the 2011 anime instead.)
> 
> Inspirations so far are: Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Pathologic, Call of Cthulhu (2018), and Silent Hill. (Yet I do not intend for this to be horror, I swear.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a line from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

In a jar on his desk, a butterfly chased its thorax.

The man who kept the lighthouse leaned forward, his form hovering over a journal littered with observations and diagrams. Today, he drew, in the corner of the page, a dissection of the butterfly. A monarch; its oranges and yellows were stark against the faded grey walls of his workroom. His back arched, and he bent, focused, over the book, expressing every detail he saw on the creature before him. The fire in the lighthouse was burning; there was nothing he could do but stay and ensure that it continued burning throughout the cloud-heavy day and into the bleak night.

The man who kept the lighthouse straightened his back, hearing the cacophony of cracks that came after pitching himself forward for such a long period of time. His hair was pulled away from his face, held back by a hemp tie, and the child he was training, he knew, was sitting at the top of the lighthouse. The boy would come by every day, bag steady on his shoulder, and join him for his tasks. The child had already proclaimed that he would take over when it was time; the man who kept the lighthouse would not let himself feel ill at ease by the child's unbidden appearance. He hated that it was in his instinct to fear the child, that his flesh would be so unkind as to wish to flee. His thoughts would make him feel sick, but it was not the child's fault. The child's blood was not of his doing.

The man who kept the lighthouse—Kite, he was called—had lived in the coastal hamlet of Westpeak for decades. He was not born here, but he had come to know this place as home. Its citizens had come to know him as one of them. He was, at first, the Stranger, the Thief, but finally, the Lighthouse Keeper. He knew, for all his time here, what ill-will the child's family bore him. Bore anyone who lived in the hamlet, and refused their authority.

Westpeak's citizens did not easily let them in; their guns, their guns with swords. They arrived before Kite, but somehow they resisted the pull of the community. The Intruders, the people called them. Even when they built their home and made their family. Unwanted. Not one of us. The child that sat at the top of the lighthouse, keeping himself busy doing something or other, was born in Westpeak. Kite remembers the fuss the citizens made at every new addition to the blood. They thought, with every child, came a new threat to Westpeak. But the family never acted, and they earned new names. The Militia. Their patriarch the General; his firstborn the Lieutenant. Their name would not be a tacit approval of them or what they did. Their guns, their guns with swords, still wracked the citizens with fear. But neither the General nor his Lieutenant ever touched them. They waited.

Kite rose from his desk and climbed the stairwell of the lighthouse, rising upwards. At the top, the light—an object of mirrors and electricity—and the child. Kite went to where he was seated, his legs stuck between the rails. His feet swung out to the vast expanse of sea, and his fingers fidgeted with something trapped in his fist. Joining him, Kite sat at his side, tucking his feet beneath him. The electric light was warm against their backs.

"What did you bring?" He asked, as the child pulled on something that looked like a burlap string.

"I'm making a doll." The child pulled hard, and then loosened his fist. Kite could see the menagerie of canvas and cotton held there, tied together at the throat. It was simple craftsmanship, but Kite saw its integrity.

"For whom?"

"My sister." The child dug a fist into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper—upon it he recognized the staples of The Militia's stationary. The child handed the paper over, and Kite looked. On the page was a drawing, a doodle. A little boy, a little girl, and a little ghost.

Since her birth, Westpeak had heard nothing of the latest addition to the family, and Kite wondered why that was. Or why it was that rumors of death from the Militia home began to escalate. People were starting to be afraid of the family in a way they hadn't been since they'd first arrived. They were still waiting, but for what? The cemetery grew, but no one acted. Kite wondered if the fear of the blood had outgrown the desire for its expulsion.

Or was it the prospect of change that scared the citizens of Westpeak? Kite scratched his nose, and the question fled.

"You'll be able to take it to her?" Kite asked, and saw the boy's mind splinter. In a split second, he shoved the unfinished doll in his pocket.

"No." His voice did not fluctuate, and Kite hurt for him. Unable to do anything more, Kite reached out and placed his hand on the boy's shoulder.

He could not offer well-wishes. He could not offer reassurance. He did not know the boy's family as well as he could, but he did know him. He could be here, working silently. A sentinel to which the child could come when he needed reprieve. It was all Kite could do. Could be.

The child he was training was still the child he was training, and Kite needed him to know that there would always be a place for him at the lighthouse.

* * *

The child grew into a young man, and Kite retired from his work.

The people in town now called him The Old Lighthouse Keeper, and rather than refer to the child as they had been (The Colonel) they began to call him The Lighthouse Keeper. (Kite, alone it seemed, preferred to call him by his name, Killua.) His hair had grown, and when Kite looked at him now, he saw an echo of himself. Still, often, Kite visited the lighthouse, and met with him.

Killua did not draw to pass his day, as Kite did. He preferred to sit at the top of the lighthouse, his legs folded beneath him, as he worked with his hands to create. One day—a fist-sized block of wood. The next—a sampling of clay. When Kite visited, he would see the expansion of Killua's collection. Figures, statues, shapes. He spent a day knitting a hat, and the next, hemming a sleeve. A collection of gifts that would never be received.

Kite and Killua sat at the top of the lighthouse, looking over the sea. Watching the emerald waves churn and crash in the obscuring mist, cutting itself on the black cliff-side.

"You moved into the room down below," Kite said. Behind the mist, the sun burned white. The only way the sun ever shined on Westpeak. At the pier to the north, five silhouettes stood with poles and buckets.

"You moved into the basement of the inn," Killua replied. "There's room here. If you wanted."

"I couldn't impose."

The roar of the ocean forbade a silence between the two, despite the words no longer coming. In Killua's hands was a lump of clay, he'd been forming it into a shape Kite could not discern.

"The Innkeeper..." Killua said. "How long have the two of you planned for this?"

"Since you were sixteen and still around. He is glad to have me. We've become well-acquainted over the years." The Inn was by the pier, and The Fishers often spent time there eating and drinking. It was always quiet in The Inn. At first, it had taken Kite time to adjust, but the time he lived in Westpeak was not for naught. He was beginning to look like he belonged there. He was The Old Lighthouse Keeper, after all. He was to be trusted.

Killua rubbed his thumb along the lump of clay, like Kite would rub his thumb along a pencil when he drew. The clay streaked with obscured versions of his thumbprint, at first, but the thumb took on a circular motion that kneaded out the unbidden pattern. It was beginning to look like a face that was taken by the earth and the sky and then stretched between the two. Square and angular. It reminded Kite of a totem that Morel, The Innkeeper, kept at the end of his bar.

“You wouldn’t impose,” Killua finally said. “If you lived here. I’d appreciate the company.” Kite hadn’t considered that.

“Are you lonely?”

Killua’s gaze moved away from the clay in his hands and seemed to fall upon the Fishers at the pier. One of them pulled in a fish and deposited it in the bucket at their feet.

“Not quite,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of time to myself.”

Kite nodded. As one who was once an Outsider, and as one who also manned the lighthouse, Kite felt the same, often. Killua, though he had family in Westpeak, was once and was now the same as Kite. There was a comfort the two took in being alone. In holding all of their senses within themselves. But it dulled, Kite noticed, when they sat together at the top of the lighthouse.

“I got a letter,” Killua said, releasing their previous topic of conversation into the wind. “From my father.”

“Does he want something?” Kite toed the subject carefully. Not for Killua’s sake; Killua was boundlessly confident in speaking of his family. Kite, however, still held the fear of Westpeak in himself at the thought of the Militia.

Killua’s eyes narrowed, and his gaze drifted higher, away from the pier. Even though he was no longer looking, his fingers began to move against the clay, pinching strange cheeks into the face. Killua’s eyes were set on the sea, on the white fade of the mist clashing against the algae green of the ocean.

“He invited me home to talk,” he said. “They want to do something, build something, but I don’t know what. Not yet.” Kite frowned.

The General must have an understanding of how Westpeak worked, Kite gathered. But for his own sanity, he could not guess what the man was planning.

“Not yet?” Kite, in a blink, registered Killua’s last two words. “Do you plan to talk with him?”

Killua breathed in; the heaviness of his gaze lightened as the sun seemed to brighten against the mist. The pinches he’d made in the clay were being smoothed down, leaving lines beside the face’s eyes.

“I do,” he said. “At some point. But only for an hour.”

Kite understood the stipulation. When Killua was younger—fourteen, to be precise—he had decided to claim the spare room at the lighthouse and had lived there for a week before wandering back home, only to be restrained by his family for four months before he escaped through his bedroom window. Even though he was an adult now, by legal measure, both Kite and Killua knew the Militia would resort to the same measures if they were allowed.

“You’ll let me know,” Kite said. “What he tells you, won’t you?”

Killua nodded, and the Old Lighthouse Keeper stood, stretching out his bones, before bidding farewell and descending from the lighthouse’s peak.

* * *

Out in the distance, a caravel bucked against the waves of the sea. No sail was aloft, and the wood looked rotten. The ship maneuvered the waves, slipping against them and against the wind, it seemed, toward Westpeak’s lighthouse.

From the top of the lighthouse, Killua watched, disturbed at the ship’s unnatural movements, and disturbed by the sudden spike of urge that raced through him. A screaming within his soul, or else the puppet strings of the universe, yanked him onto his feet and down the stairs to the base of the lighthouse. He reached the cliff and looked out again.

The caravel was slowly but steadily getting closer, and Killua knew where it was heading. Below the lighthouse and its cliff was a pier, sticking out for the smaller Fisher boats and for the voyages Westpeak once embarked on.

But it was an old pier, and much of its wood had been eaten by salt and sea and rain. And yet, Killua chanced his way on the path down. The mud was slick and the old wooden stairs slumped against his boots. Yet, Killua did not slip down the path as he made his way to the old pier, nearly blind against the night. The light of the moon was blotted against the clouds, and yet he could see, barely, through the mist, the ship’s approach.

As he reached the base of the cliff, the caravel grew closer, and Killua could see from it a green light, a lantern hanging from its bow. Feeling a hitching fear in his chest, he swallowed heavily and stepped onto the pier. It creaked beneath him, but it did not break, nor did it crack, nor slump, nor heave. Killua felt as though he stood upon solid rock.

The caravel slowed and came to an easy stop. The deck was completely empty, Killua noticed, as he reached it. His eyes swept over, noting the lack of any life on the boat as the landing board reached out onto the pier. The squawk of a bird alerted him, and Killua saw, with panic gripping him, a bird tied to the mast by its foot, trying to fly away. Just a moment ago, he could have sworn it was dead.

The grip on his bones pulled him onto the ship. The green light encased him as he climbed up onto the deck and found it covered with a thin layer of frost. Yet as he walked, the frost melted. Water seeped into the wood.

Killua approached the bird slowly. Upon seeing him, it seemed to freeze in fear, but he continued forward, nonetheless. He grabbed hold of the rope binding the bird and loosened it, letting the rope drop. The bird immediately took off, letting its wings rip through his hair as it flew off behind him. As he turned to watch it go, Killua’s boot knocked against something on the deck of the ship, and he looked down.

Sitting on the deck was a crossbow bolt, just below where the bird was tied.

The wood creaked. The boat was empty, but at the bow, against its raised front, Killua saw a shape. Something white sitting on the wood. He approached it, noticing it was still covered in frost that slowly receded.

He could barely make out the shape of the object, the skull, before it turned to dust. Killua’s heart pounded in his throat as the wood of the ship creaked again. The boat was empty, but the hatch near the back was flung open and hands reached up and gripped its sides. Killua turned around and watched a shape emerge in the night. Dark as the sky and the sea it was, but as it came forth, the green light illuminated it. A figure, a man came up from below deck looking thin and ragged.

The man had a thick black beard and thin, concave cheeks. His hair was long and hanging down his back, and his arms trembled as he pulled himself up. His eyes, as they fell on Killua, were glassy, like large brown beads someone had pushed into his eye sockets. The man's mouth opened and closed, like a still-living fish in a Fisher's bucket. His voice croaked out of him, but he made no words. The sounds were more akin to those of the wood beneath their feet than those a human would make.

Killua, this time not propelled by some ethereal grip but by his own will, went to the man and held out his arms to support him.

"Let me," he said softly as the man stepped away from the hatch below deck. Those glassy eyes were fixed on him. "Come... come with me. Let me help you."

Killua doubted the words as they left him, and the man didn't seem to understand. Killua could not, in good conscience, leave him on this ship. This ship that sailed itself, with skulls that turned to dust, and birds that came back to life.

The man’s eyes fell on the lantern behind them, but Killua guided him forward, to the pier, off the ship. All the while, the man didn’t seem to register what was happening, and Killua couldn’t help but wonder, worry, about the man. What it was that had caused this. The light, the ship, the bird. But it didn’t seem that the man was in a state to explain himself. Or even have the strength to attack Killua, given the desire. So Killua pulled him along, up the path beside the cliff, and to the lighthouse still shining in the mist above them.

“You can stay here,” Killua said, though he knew his audience wasn’t cognizant of his words. “There’s a spare room.”

With the man still grasping onto him, he came to the door of the lighthouse, getting them both inside as thunder cracked through the clouds. The man did not react to the noise.

Killua led him forward, into the house below the tower and to the room in the back, with its small bed and neat brown blanket. He lit the oil lamp on the bedside table and deposited the man on the bed, who simply sat and stared ahead. The room was clean, Killua had cleaned it the other week when he invited Kite to stay. Now, with the stranger sitting daftly, hands limp on his knees, though back steadily holding himself, Killua found himself both pleased and disappointed by Kite’s refusal. He was glad he had room for the man, but he worried of the trouble it would cause. He worried that the man may try to harm him, and of the gossip that may seep through Westpeak at the ship down below and the new stranger. Killua pulled away.

“I’m going to make some stew,” he said. “I’ll leave it on the table here for you to eat.” Then he left the room. The man still did not move, or even seem to notice his departure.

Killua, letting his thoughts boil and rattle in his head, made his way to the kitchen. His heart pounded in his throat and silently, not allowing his thoughts to spill from his lips, he pulled out his stew pot and got to work cooking.

He did not know what had happened tonight. He did not even know the hour he was making this food. It did not seem to matter.

He believed in fate. He believed that something bigger than himself had whims that must be fulfilled. Or else why would he have gone down the cliff? How would the ship have gotten through the sea just as a storm rolled in?

Outside, the thunder cracked again, and rain began to drum heavily against the windows. The stew, made with leftover vegetables and meat, began to simmer in a thick brown broth. He did not realize he’d gotten this far in making the food. He breathed in, taking in the scents of his kitchen, the stew on the stove, and the mud that still clinged to his boots.

It must have been that fate wanted this. Wanted him to help this stranger. This Outsider who arrived on an empty boat. He breathed in the smells of his home and closed his eyes, feeling the heat of the stew waft up toward him. If fate wanted this, then this is what he would do. He would help. He would become the starting point for someone else’s life, as Kite was for him. The solid rock for which the Outsider could find his balance.

Killua looked over to the spare room. The door was closed, as he had left it, and no sound came from inside. The stew boiled.

Quietly, Killua stirred the stew and spooned it into a bowl, before placing a lid over it. He grabbed a spoon and came forward to the door, pulling it open as he let himself inside.


	2. All The Thorns Remain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes" by Charlotte Smith

The expedition had departed from Westpeak on a crisp morning. No clouds waited on the horizon, heralding the approach of a raucous storm. The sand was damp, as it always was, with low hanging mist settling against it and clinging to the skin of the sailors and well-wishes that gathered at the pier. The citizens of Westpeak watched as the caravel pulled away from the shore—the wind pulling at the sails, pulling it out to the open sea. It was heading north, toward the frozen waters and the creatures that Westpeak found so critical for their luxuries.

On the caravel, a young man watched the sky. He was the captain's son, called Son of the Sea while back home. His father would hardly spend time on land, seemed only to dock for more than a few days at a time twice in the town’s recent memory. Once to sire him, and once to take him on board the ship. The young man did not know what became of his mother.

Yet, it hardly mattered to him. He was, by all accounts, a permanent and beloved fixture of the ship. The Son of the Sea, who breathed the salted air with such vigor that some crewmen whispered that his mother was actually a mermaid or a siren. A woman of the sea who had once graced the captain with her presence and had gifted him this son. The captain, in his own right, was flustered by these rumors and never responded, so no one knew the truth of the matter.

As this expedition departed, the Son of the Sea had since broken through the cusp of adulthood—age a crisp twenty-two. He resembled his father, mostly, so no one ever questioned their relation. His black hair was thick, though seemed to be tinged with the rich green of algae. His eyes were nearly the same brown, though alight with the burn of the evening sun. The sailors would claim those pieces of his mother. The captain never disputed.

A tall, boney sailor crossed the deck toward the Son of the Sea. He was shirtless, displaying a few selected tattoos. A kraken on his back, and an albatross on his upper arm. He came to the young man, whose eyes were skyward, watching a seabird twisting around the mast, keeping up with the movement of the ship as the caravel rode over the tender waves of the sea. The sailor held aloft a crossbow and showed it with a grin to the young man, who welcomed his approach with a warm smile of his own.

“No work for you, then, Krealy?” the young man asked as the sailor approached.

“Not so much that I can’t come over,” he answered. “In fact, I was hoping to propose a little game between the two of us.”

The words were met with the narrowed glance of feigned suspicion. “You know the captain doesn’t like those…” The protest was half-hearted; his eyes quickly widened back to their normal, excited gaze. “What kind of game were you thinking?”

"Tell me, boy," the sailor said, handing him the crossbow. It was heavy, the weapon, just as he thought it might be. "Your daddy ever teach you to shoot?"

He hadn't the time to give his answer before the sailor decided to show him the ropes. It seemed to him that the sailor did not care what his answer would be regardless. The explanation was brief and seemed to depend more on the fact that the captain had already taught his son how to shoot, rather than any significant teaching. After he had run through his explanation, the sailor pointed to the sky, to the bird the young man had been watching. The sailor tilted up the crossbow and gave him a nod.

"Well, then," he said. "Shoot."

* * *

The vibrant memories of the albatross faded into a dim grey. He could see the blue light of the moon shining on the door in front of him. The weak light of a candle radiated from his right, though the small table it sat upon was bare. On his left, against the far wall was a dresser. Atop it, a small wooden statue of a whale bursting out of the ocean and on the wall hung a drawing of a dragonfly. Both were marvelously crafted, but he could not parse their meaning. He meant to stand and look at them, but his body betrayed him.

His bones felt weak. He couldn't move. His chest was cold, tinged still with the frost that haunted his thoughts. When he breathed, he tasted the salt of the sea, as though he were saturated in it, as though it were reaching to him still and baying for his return. He could hear it, still. Hammering somewhere behind him, somewhere below him. In his chest, his heart hammered back, a deep throbbing echo longing for its own return.

The door to the room his was in opened, and he looked at the man who entered. He was tall, with a leanness that must have belied his strength and long white hair that was pulled back out of his face, though some locks in the front hung down to his eyebrows, cut choppily. He was holding a bowl of something; steam floated up and dissolved in the air, piercing through the coldness that seemed to weigh on the room, and he could smell, strongly, the rich, thick scent of stock and meat.

The man came in front of him and knelt down; he tracked the movements with his eyes. He didn’t know what he was watching for—sudden movements, danger? The stew sloshed slightly in the bowl as the man’s attention was drawn towards him. None of it spilled over, it reminded him of the sea, hitching the caravel, curling up onto the deck of the ship as the storm raged around them.

The ice creeping forth onto the deck…

"I've brought you food," the man said, interrupting the memory. "Do you think you can eat it?"

He managed to nod his head, an action that seemed to surprise the man. It surprised him too, if he were to be honest with himself. His body still felt unknowable, unmovable. As though he had suddenly and without warning claimed the shell of a long-dead corpse.

"You're present, then. That's good. Do you think you can speak?" The man’s voice was soft, gentle in speaking to him. It was calming and reassuring.

He opened his mouth to attempt, though what came from his throat was a gravelly moan. His voice peaked, and mumbled, as though unable to escape him. His closed his mouth and shook his head. The man set a hand on his arm, eyes reassuring.

“That’s okay,” he said. “There are other ways to communicate.” The man then handed him the bowl, its warmth seeped into his fingers, chipping away at his permeating feeling of undeath. For a moment, he just held it; its solid weight was a comfort. Yet, as the scent of food continued to wash over him, he felt the gnawing pain of hunger rise in his gut, and he grabbed for the spoon. It quaked in his hand as he brought it down into the bowl. The hefty weight of the food brought it down slightly, but he managed to bring it to his mouth and take a bite.

It seemed to him a strange feeling, but he had the distinct sensation of returning. As though he had been away from home for so many years and was just now opening the door again. But it was only food, warm food. If he could have convinced his vocal cords to work, he would have begun sobbing loudly.

The white haired man stood from his place on the floor and came, instead to sit beside him on the bed.

“Good?” The man asked, and he nodded in reply. That seemed satisfied with that.

“I don’t suppose you’d be able to answer any of the questions I have for you, so I won’t push you now. Though I could offer you something more than just food,” the white-haired man paused, his hands on his knees. “I don’t know where you’ve sailed in from, but you’re currently in Westpeak. This is the lighthouse. I keep it.”

The floor in front of them flashed white with the storm that had been riling up outside. The white-haired man, the Lighthouse Keeper, seemed to startle; his head turned back to the window, looking at the rain pelting against the glass.

“If the light bothers you when you’re trying to sleep,” the Lighthouse Keeper said, “let me know. You know your needs better than I do.”

In wordless reply, he shook his head. He knew he would be up early, regardless of the sun. The ocean would awaken him, even if it was no longer just under his head. Even as the stew warmed him from the inside, he felt that powerful, unyielding grasp from the sea, clutching his heart. He still belonged to it, as he always had.

“Alright then.” The Lighthouse Keeper pushed himself up and stood before the bed. “I’ll be heading upstairs. Come get me if you need anything; don’t push yourself when you don’t have to.”

He watched as the Lighthouse Keeper retreated through the door of the room, leaving him alone with another flash of lightning.

The wood creaked, and finishing the last bite of food, he put the bowl to the side and laid down on the bed. The mattress was plush, unlike what was in the hull of the ship, and he felt himself sink into it. He felt like he could sleep here; he felt like he hadn’t in forever.

* * *

The stationary hadn’t changed, in all the years he was alive. It was still decorated in those thin, clinical golden lines that bordered the page and stretched across its middle. The heavy _Z_ that sat on the top of the page was still decorated in the blades of swords. Neither did his father’s stilted signature. A week ago, he received this letter, had shared it with Kite. It was still sitting open on his desk. His father’s handwriting was orderly and easily legible, ungarnished with unnecessary flourishes. In this way, it was starkly contrasted with his mother’s, when she sent letters.

Her letters mostly consisted of pleas for his return. For him to come back home, where he belonged, with them. To reclaim his role as the promised child, the one born of Westpeak, who would mark their claim to this old and barnacled village. His mother hated it here, but she stayed for his father’s sake. Yet, Killua still had no idea what his father wanted so much out of Westpeak anymore.

And Killua would not be persuaded easily to his side. For five years now, he had felt one with it, finally claimed by the whole as a part of them. As he returned to his office, he took the letter back into his hands, the one that had been left on his desk, where it had sat alone for a week now. He still had another week before his father wanted to meet him. He still had another week to decide whether or not he wanted to let his family down.

He took a seat at his desk and absently unwrapped the small chunk of modeling clay he had for moments that required only deep thought, and nothing from his hands. He pinched off a small section and re-wrapped what remained. His fingers began to work at it, as he let his mind drift.

First, his family home, sat in the middle of Westpeak—an old baron’s manor that the family had bought after they moved in. Killua never knew what had happened to the baron, but the servants liked to entertain that the family had killed him and stolen his house. Knowing his parents, Killua thought that was rather likely as well.

The manor itself was a four-story box, with one belowground. Decorated in columns and small architectural details, as it was, there wasn’t anything particularly interesting about it. It seemed to merely set a precedent for the houses that were built after it. The deep reddish-brown of its wood was echoed in the houses that fell alongside it. The grounds were large enough for the family to manage a small wooded area, that worked well enough for both training of the family’s armed forces and for the family itself.

Killua pinched the middle of the clay figure in as the memories seeped unbidden. He hated that forest, that house. He didn’t want to go back.

Green crept into his mind as he let himself drift once again. The green of the grass, of the trees his parents had told him to leap between, the green of the lantern hanging from the caravel.

Outside, the storm still raged. He could hear it hammering against the walls of the lighthouse, and he knew that despite the rain, the fire at the top still burned, encased in its glass. The light of the candle in the room downstairs had, perhaps, gone out. Had smothered itself in its own wax. Or perhaps the man he’d pulled from the caravel still watched the shadows from flame and lightning whip across the empty walls.

Killua didn’t know where to begin with that man. Not where he was from, or what to call him. The only real option he could suppose was to nurse him back to health, to get him to speak again, so that Killua could learn these things.

He didn’t look too far separated form Killua in age, just a bit shorter. Perhaps could have been mistaken for someone closer to their teens if not for the beard and musculature. While whatever it was that had affected him had stolen away most of his healthy weight and the awareness in his eyes, Killua could see his history marked into his skin. Knuckles marked with thin white scars, callouses on his hands, and small long scars on his arms. Killua, in reflecting on the man in memory, would have placed small markings of ink dripping down from beneath his shirt sleeves. The markings of a Sailor and a Fisher.

Which brought forth the question: what had happened? Why was he here? What had happened on the ship when Killua had found it?

He still wasn’t entirely convinced that it hadn’t been a dream, or some kind of illusion. But Killua had his doubts on whether or not magic was real, despite what some Fishers might have claimed, so it must have been some kind of dream that he awoke from while making the stew. Yet, he still had a Stranger in his house. But birds don’t suddenly come to life, and bones do not turn to ash before one’s eyes. A boat would not long be covered in frost in a climate like Westpeak’s.

But there was a man downstairs. He was real. Killua had brought him here with his own strength. He felt he had a duty towards the Stranger, because he had been the one who saw the boat, who stepped onto it.

Killua looked at the thoroughly squeeze form in his hand, and could vaguely make out what could have been a small fairy. With that thought in mind, at least, he set to work on making it so it had looked intentional.

* * *

In the morning, the wreckage of the storm had Killua called down to the Inn—a trip he made after checking on the lighthouse flame and preparing two servings of porridge, leaving one sitting on the table beside the bed in the spare room. The Stranger, it seemed, had slept through the night and into the morning. When Killua approached, he hadn’t moved, seeming as still as the dead if not for the subtle rise of his chest.

As Killua came to the Inn, he saw why he would be needed. The roof had caved in under the weight of a loose mast, and those who stayed in or frequented the Inn had already begun the efforts of removing it. Though it was strange, he found, the mast was covered in splinters, barnacles, and algae, as though it had been submerged under water for centuries. He thought, at once, he knew what ship it had come from, but it was a thought he quickly chased from his mind.

Dreams, obviously, did not have this kind of effect on reality.

Though dreams, also, did not leave strange men in your guest room, so Killua was left without any kind of clue as to what had actually occurred the night before.

Kite and Morel, the Innkeeper, stood at the front of the building and waved Killua close as he neared. Morel took a long drag of his pipe, his eyes squinting out at the wreckage as the morning sun warmed them. The sky was cloudy with the aftermath of the storm, but the Sailors knew that nothing would come of it; the storm had passed.

“How’re you faring up on that hill?” Morel said, the smoke streaming out of his mouth as his spoke.

“Better than you down here,” Killua answered. “The fire wasn’t even put out.”

“True,” Kite said. “Saw the light down here. Miraculous, you know. Damned fire was never so dependable for me.” Killua grinned, and Kite frowned at him in return.

Morel glanced at the two. “Well, be that as it may,” he said. “I am glad you got down here as fast as you did. I’d like to have the Inn rebuilt before all the Fishers come back from their shifts. Got some men off to the Doctor’s; roof collapsed into a couple rooms and got some guests injured.” As Killua began to interject, Morel held up a hand. “Don’t worry about them. I got Knuckle to take them all over, and he’s still out with them. Though with him out, we’ve only got the hands that we’ve got, which is why I sent the Caller around to find some helpers.”

Killua nodded. A glance to the Inn showed that most of the rubble had been cleaned up, now all that was left was to patch up the sizeable hole in the roof and fix the interior rooms.

“When did the mast fall?” He asked, looking again at Morel as the Innkeeper led both him and Kite back to the Inn. The large man set to work as he arrived, and Killua followed, propping up another ladder on the side of the wall. The wood creaked under him, and he began to wonder how bad the structural damage truly was.

“Last night, during the storm,” Morel answered as he worked on the inside of the Inn, but close enough to the damage that Killua could still hear him as he shouted. “Middle of the night, I’d say. Heard this big crashing noise that we thought was lightning until people started calling out. Haven’t slept since.”

Kite had slipped inside the Inn as well, helping the regulars and off-duty Sailors in setting up the support beams for the roof. The walls of the second floor rooms that had been crushed by the mast were being repaired by spare pieces of wood and the nails that were available. While it may have not looked aesthetically appealing, Killua couldn’t foresee anyone having issues with the stability of the walls. The pieces fit together soundly, and though make-shift, it would do its job.

The work built up a sweat, especially as the sun began to climb in the sky and the air began to thrum with the heat of the day, but with the hands they had, they were able to fix what was broken. As the final nail found its place in the shingles of the Inn, Killua’s gaze fell back to the mast that had done the damage.

They had left it on the nearby beach, down on a rocky part of the shore. The tide knocked up against it, pushing it closer to Westpeak, rather than dragging it into the ocean. The mast itself was bare of its sail, and the wood was tainted dark and greenish from exposure to the ocean. Yet, as he took note of the mast from his seat atop the Inn, a gull flew down to perch on the mast, its dark eyes catching Killua’s as it did. It called out to him and kicked off the mast, flying up to the roof of the Inn. It did not land close to him; even if he leaned out, arm outstretched, he would not be able to touch it. But the bird stared at him, and he stared at it. It cried out once again, spread out its wings, and took off, over Killua’s head. He watched it fly away.

The mast, though it had been sat decaying on the beach, had disappeared. There was no sign of it bobbing in the water.

Killua climbed down from the roof of the Inn. The sun was still hot in the sky, but he thought it would be better to prepare a midday meal for himself and the Stranger. Cooking, he thought, would perhaps take his mind off of the things he had seen; if indeed he would be able to make sense of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per necessity to the plot, I have appended a Slow Burn tag. Buckle up.


End file.
